Associating Protocol Stacks with Logical Boards
Once the logical boards have been defined, the next step is to associate each
desired protocol stack with one or more logical boards. Each active protocol
stack must have at least one logical board that it can use to send and receive
datagrams. Each association of a protocol stack with a logical board is known as
a binding. Note that not all protocol stacks can bind with all types of logical boards.
While IPX can usually bind to any type of logical board, TCP/IP can often only
bind with logical boards using one particular frame type on any particular
type of physical network.
Once these bindings are complete, applications will be able to use the
high-level programming interfaces of the protocol stacks to communicate on the network
without regard to the details of underlying network adapters, network
topologies, or frame types.